It’s been a week of tussles for education. As the grammar school row within the Conservative Party rumbles on – Graham Brady quits but then the Tories appear to ‘climb-down’, as education secretary Alan Johnson put it – the only thing about Tory policy which is clear is that the party is in disarray. Alan… [Read More]
Having an independent NHS seems to be the big idea at the moment. Cameron is all for it, Brown is pondering it and Andy Burnham, the likely successor to the embattled Ms. Hewitt, is apparently sympathetic. As are a number of influential bodies. Steve Dewar, Director of Health Policy at the King’s Fund, re-ignited the… [Read More]
When the government fails to fulfill its minimal responsibilities, it is the poor that will suffer while the rich can usually find an alternative. In a typical case in the UK, for years, even as average fees have been rising, the number of families seeking out independent education has been growing steadily. There it is… [Read More]
A recent article in the International Herald Tribune provides its readers with some not entirely reassuring details about how young British Muslim students at their country’s burgeoning madrassas are being taught citizenship in them. Continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
The Conservatives u-turn on grammar schools has dominated this week’s education news. That there was rebellion in the Tory ranks was not surprising, grammar schools being a pinnacle of previous Conservative education policy. What was surprising, however, was the fact that the rebellion struck only now. Cameron, Willets and Osborne have all said that grammar… [Read More]
This morning, Radio 4’s Today programme aired a shocking report on the poor treatment of employees (mostly Polish immigrants) in a banana packing factory. Workers had to accept long hours or face being unemployed. Their breaks would be cancelled if the managers felt they had not packed enough boxes. In the most extreme example, a… [Read More]
The weekend papers had a number of contributions focused on the EU and the increasingly resurgent issue of its proposed Constitution. Charles Moore spent his Saturday wrestling with the trials of recycling (in his Telegraph article at least), as imagined up by both the architects of the new Landfill Directive and those of that soon-to-be-recycled… [Read More]
The element which has worried me most about education reforms under New Labour, is the way that learning has been squeezed out in order to accommodate improvement. It sounds like an oxymoron of course, but the Government’s desire to be seen to be doing well, as educationalist Alan Smithers once so pithily put it, has… [Read More]
A study released yesterday by Cancer Research UK revealed that in the past 30 years, survival rates from cancer in the UK have almost doubled from 23.6% in 1971, to 46.2% in 2000/1. OECD statistics running up to 2003 show the trend continued. In terms of deaths from cancer before the age of 70 that… [Read More]
Anyone hoping for a change in attitude to schools at the next election will be sorely disappointed by the news that the Tories have cloned their new education policy from Labour. In a repentant tone, David Willetts casts aside grammar schools and embraces Comprehensive education. The disingenuous reasoning behind this move: ‘We must break free… [Read More]